Surely everybody saw ARRA stimulus for the seduction it was. Only the naive would fall for the classic snare: Give people money they don’t need until they expect it. Then, take it away and watch what they’ll do for a Klondyke bar. Somehow, a lot of people in government missed this lesson in their psychology classes. Many states built the extra, albeit proverbial, something-for-nothing into their budgets. And, as expected, government is yanking their strings.
You will recall how our federal government cares. It wants to create jobs and provide universal healthcare under a host of different names. So benevolent is Congress, it is, as predicted, now threatening to withhold those two entitlements in order to jerk the strings of its ensnared dependents into dancing in whatever way pleases the puppet master (e.g., promoting greater transfers of power to the government by waving your fingers in the air and saying, “This is exciting!”).
Once again, those who embraced a fiscally conservative philosophy are maintaining an even keel through the storm, as well as their dignity and freedom not to dance the embarrassingly silly dances. With tremendous kudos, I copy the words of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.
“We assumed conservatively that there would not be a bonus check,” Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told The Associated Press. “It would have never entered our mind to put funny money like that into the budget.”
Daniels, a former budget director under President George W. Bush and a possible 2012 presidential contender, has won praise for his fiscal stewardship in Indiana, which has weathered the downturn better than most industrial states.
“Frankly, I think it’d be irresponsible of the federal government to borrow more money in order to bail out states that didn’t handle themselves very well,” Daniels said.
While not directly tied to state budgets, governors have warned that a denial of unemployment benefits will devastate families and slow the economy even more.
